PS4 games

[CallOfTheRiled]

My DS is 14. At school he seems happy enough; he has quite a wide group of people to go around with, but no close friends.
He doesn't go out much at the weekends, but playing sport on Saturday and Sunday, fills a large part of his days. However, the interaction he used to have with his friends was on-line games. Unfortunately, this is increasingly difficult as he isn't allowed the games they play. We rejected Grand Theft Auto out of hand, and he accepted this. Now, 'everyone' he engages with online is playing 'Mortal Combat'. In our opinion its an 18, so its a no. However he is genuinely upset and says the game is so OTT that its cartoon like and we aren't being fair. I can see he is feeling lonely and I am really torn. My Dh does try and do things with him, but its not the same. Would I be really unwise to give in on a case- by case basis, and is this game suitable for a (mature) 14 year old?

The game is deliberately, wildly cartoonish. There is extreme gore, but it's more loony tunes than Saw.

Thanks for replying. Is the 'gore' the main concern? He's 14...!

How is his personality? It's my view that their personality is fairly set by that age and if he was going to suddenly turn into a knife wielding zombie killer you'd probably have a good idea by now.

I'd check some reviews and on line videos to see what you think. My 14 and 13 year olds have games above their age (not that one) though we didn't give in until they were way older than some of their friends. We do it on a case by case basis - personally i'm not too concerned about fantasy type violence.

Is this the most recent call of duty game? We decided to let ds (nearly 14) have this for Christmas. I don't see it as a problem as long as the yoing person isn't spending all of their time shut in their room playing war games. Ds will play this but is just as likely to play mine craft or fifa and is only allowed to play online with existing school friends.

It's so hard! I think in this case social exclusion trumps (your very reasonable) objections.
Can he play it downstairs in a family room? DS plays GTA with headphones on and I read or mnet- the scenery is lovely!

Mortal Combat has been around for YEARS. Longer than call of duty. It's like street fighter and other arcade games. It's just a fighting game. The new ones a bit... cringy. If you do your combos right you can snap the neck of your apponent (they're still alive) and it shows you ti and sounds so vile but it's hilarious. I beat DP on it last night, was great.
To be honest, the only game I wouldn't let a 14 year old have, MAYBE, is GTA5. But that's only because of drugs & prostitution. You can turn the gore off on COD and I've met a lot of my good friends online through games. me and DP have been playing games since we were about 4 or 5. I can't say to my dc, "no you can't play resident evil!"
"Mum, but didn't you have it when you were 7"
"yes..."

it's hypocritical for us to say no when most likely, we will be playing and they will inevitably see it. GTA is actually fine if you play the storyline and don't go off doing other missions. you DO rob a bank but you stop women from being kidnapped. Everyone sees the bad side of gaming, but there are great stories and a 14 year old nowdays can understand what they're talking about. the fans get older but the audience gets younger. I think RockStar have yet to realise that parents just won't buy their kids games anymore, even though their games are hilarious and captivating. I was even crying at The Walking Dead by telltale.

If you're really that worried about gore, get him Skyrim or something. it's gorgeous. and you're not fighting people (sometimes you are) but it's mainly fighting dragons, bears, sabretooth tigres, trolls, spriggans. and it's gorgeous. I just got the GOTY edition (game+DLC) on Steam for £6.70 down from £19.99 and I'm so, so happy.

I know kids want to play extremely violent games but I guess I'm just desensitised to it and I don't find them extremely violent, I find them fun. I'm an adult and I still play Pokémon. It's my favourite game and has been for the past 15 years.

I suppose it's different when you don't grow up on a family of gamers. I get called all sorts of names by my family because I still game

meowth one of the very best Pokemon :)

I agree with you. I am not into gaming but both my sons are, of course they have the odd moody times but in general they are nice, polite, reasonably industrious (DS1 anyway, not so much DS2) get good school reports etc. They both have GTAV it was a bit of a flash in the pan tbh, mostly hype - they played for a bit and haven't bothered too much since. Skyrim was a big favourite though, DS2 likes some of the COD games - the ones with the zombies (black ops?) I don't have an issue with fantasy type violence when it is other creatures that are involved - wasn't so keen on the ones where you are shooting humans but then neither were they. They like a lot of the Anime/Manga fighting games (Naruto, Dragonnall z and that one with the Pirates that I can't remember the name of)

The gore is very cartoonish, similar to what you get in graphic novels.
If he's mature for his age and isn't bothered by gore, I don't think it will do too much harm.

Thank you. Neither my husband or I have any interest whatsoever in gaming, so it's all very alien to us. Plus we are 'older parents'. He has skyrim ( I think) I guess it feels like the start of a slippery slope. We are going to look and see if there are any clips on YouTube. I am wavering...